Hemingway, you bitch.

When I followed a handful of seasonal re-reading patterns, before children and meaningful employment, one of them was to read Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast in the Fall. The introduction hinted at that which Hemingway cut from the book, or at least what he wanted us to think he cut from the book. Turns out Papa really did have a little bit tucked away, as Scribner is releasing The Restored Edition of the book. I note the word choice of “restored” over the more reassuring “complete” and yet will still likely pony up.

By his own account, Hemingway thereupon leads the author of The Diamond As Big As the Ritz out to the men’s room, conducts a brief inspection, and reassures (or, to be more exact, fails to reassure) his pal that all is well, and that he’s looking down on his penis, literally and figuratively, rather than taking the sidelong perspective. I have never trusted this story, if only because—as Hemingway himself later admits—“it is not basically a question of the size in repose. It is the size that it becomes.” So, unless the viewing in the Michaud pissoir was of an engorged and distended “Scottie”—which it plainly was not—then Papa was offering Fitzgerald a surrogate form of consolation. And was then planning to write about it!

I was going to use “An Engorged and Distended Scottie” for the subject of this post; did I make the right decision?